Monday, July 24, 2017

The Politics of Mean

By Eric SegallThe President of the United
States is one of the few democratically elected leaders in the world who is
both the administrative leader of the government and the symbolic head of the Country.
In many nations, these roles are divided between a President and a Prime
Minister or even a Prime Minister and royalty with no official governmental responsibilities.
This dual capacity of our Chief Executive makes it imperative that the
President carry out his duties with class and character because his behavior has
a role-model quality that affects not just our youth but our entire national
character. This is why I thought Bill Clinton should have resigned the
Presidency after we found out that he lied under oath about having sexual
relations with a White House intern. His basic defense, that having oral
intimacy is not “having sex,” I believe, had negative consequences for a
generation of young Americans, and his obvious lying and truth-cutting was not
the kind of behavior we want from an American President.

The hallmark of President
Trump’s Presidency, so far, is the politics of mean. Trump’s behavior strongly
suggests that it is okay to respond to the professional with the personal. Over
the last couple of days, Trump used Twitter to repeat his campaign nickname for the former
Senator from New York, Secretary of State, and First Lady, “Crooked Hilary.” He
also called congressman Adam Schiff “sleazy.” Of course, these insults are just
the tip of the iceberg.

As the New York Times documented
last week (or more accurately updated), Trump insults his political and other
opponents so regularly that we have almost become numb to his misbehavior. He has said
among many other things, that he ran “Lindsey Graham out of the race like a
little boy”; that Mitt Romney was “a disaster candidate who had no guts and
choked”; that Glen Beck is “dumb as a rock”; that Jeb Bush is a “disaster to
himself and his family”; that Rick Perry, now his Secretary of Energy, “should
be forced to take an IQ test”; and that Rand Paul “reminds me of a spoiled brat
without a proper functioning brain.” As the New York Times summary shows, Trump
uses the same type of rhetoric for non-political figures, labor unions,
companies he doesn’t like, and even the American people.

Reasonable people can disagree
over many of the policy choices Trump favors and even whether his longstanding
Russian partners and investors in his businesses pose a security risk to the
United States. Law professors are currently disagreeing over many legal issues
surrounding Trump, such as whether he is violating the Foreign Emoluments Clause by keeping the profits from his businesses,
whether he can be indicted while holding Office, and the nature and extent of
the pardon power. But I can’t imagine any responsible person thinking that
Trump’s politics of vicious name calling and character assassination is
appropriate behavior for the President of the United States. Is this how we
want politics conducted at the local and state levels? Is this how we want our
children and young adults to interact with people they disagree with? Is this
how we want the rest of the world to see our politics? Trump’s aggressive and
offensive insults might have played well during his stint as a reality
television star who took joy in firing people, but it is simply a horrific management
style for the President of the United States.

So, what to do? By all
accounts, Trump listens most to his family. I’d like to believe that at least
his wife and maybe Ivanka don’t like their husband and father respectively
acting like an angry twelve-year-old bully who responds to every disagreement
with the intellectual equivalent of “I’m rubber, your glue, and everything you say
bounces off me and sticks to you.” If they already have tried, and failed, then those around him need to take more immediate action.

It is also hard to believe
that many in his Cabinet or the Vice-President approve of this
playground behavior. Are they just so scared of Trump that they can’t point out
how harmful his insulting tweets are to our nation’s discourse. My guess is
that Trump goes out of his way to appeal to the narrowest part of his base
defined by hate and prejudice. This makes his rhetoric even more divisive and
dangerous. Don’t any of advisers understand, out of self-interest if nothing
else, that the insults do
not advance and almost certainly hurt the causes they care most about? Isn’t there
someone who will stand up and say, “Enough, Mr. President, enough.”

The President has a new
Communications Director named Anthony Scarramucci. It turns out that his
cousin Jimmy grew up three houses from me. I didn’t know Anthony well but I
played sports with Jimmy, who was a very good athlete. Jimmy also understood
and practiced the ideals and benefits of friendly competition. Trump is almost
certainly the kind of person who would cheat at sports, be a classless winner,
and an even worse sore loser. Jimmy would have hated all that (at least as a
child).

Maybe the New
Communications Director, who says he “loves’ the President, can do the country
(and the President) a huge favor by showing some tough love. Belittling and
shaming others is not good politics for the local city councilperson much less
for the leader of the free world. Trump’s rhetoric of mean is contagious, dangerous,
and unnecessary. The country needs an intervention, and it needs it fast.

4 comments:

He won while being mean. It very well might have helped him in some areas.

He is mean. Hard to stop being who you are at 70. This isn't "A Christmas Carol."

Left with convincing him being mean is less useful while in office. Unless Republicans truly punish him for being mean, however, what really would warrant him being convinced? His base still likes him being mean. He can always fall back to them.

One restraint there might have been to say "John Bush is too mean of a judicial pick." But, not a single Republican voted against him. As to "tough love," Trump isn't a fan. Wouldn't have picked the new Communications Director if he had to worry about that. Instead, he deleted past tweets critical of Trump.

Trump's new Communications Director brings to mind Cab Calloway's "Minnie the Moocher" which SNL might consider adapting when it returna this Fall. I imagine Alec Baldwin in white tie and tails singing of "Tony the Moocher."

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